Touching the Tactile

Workshop at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, April 10th and 11th.

The institutions collaborating
with Topographies of the Obsolete will all arrange their own
workshops and seminars available for participants of the artistic
research project and others interested in discourse with relations
to the work done within the artistic research project. First
institution out is the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,
arranging the two-day workshop "Touching the Tactile" at the
Medical Museion classical auditorium and in the sculptor
department's grand studio at the Academy. This seminar investigates
the impact of the manner in which archives, collections of objects
and artworks are presented to the public, and the potential that
lies in the sense of touch:

"As Aristotle already remarked,
the sense of touch tends to evade any clear definition. Is touch a
sense organ in its own right or does it rather operate as a general
function that makes sensation in itself possible? Likewise, if all
perception occurs through a medium that differs the sensing body
from the sensed, how can one account for this interspace in tactile
sensation if the distance between that which touches and that which
is touched is barely discernible? Even if they primarily belong to
a philosophical discourse, these and similar questions concerning
the nature of touch are just as relevant in other contexts,
especially those where the prosaicness of touch is circumscribed by
specific rules and norms and enacted in particular
spaces.

The aim of this workshop is to
approach the sense of touch via a series of hands-on investigations
and discussions that will take place within the context of art and
museum practices. By focusing on touch, the workshop draws
attention to features that are often overlooked in the fabric of
art exhibits and museum displays. More particularly, the workshop
will unfurl the experience and knowledge that comes with touch and
the things that we touch. These are experiences that span from
intimate relationships, over the skills of diverse crafts and the
knowledge of specific materials to pedagogical methods and artistic
positions that entail the actual touching of objects and works
(e.g. museum exhibits for visually impaired people and artworks
such as Gonzalez-Torres candy spills). The question is, among
others, what kind of knowledge do we speak about when we speak
about touch? What kind of remembrance is invoked? Is it conceptual,
can it be conceptualized, or does it rather stand in opposition to
concepts and visuality? Likewise, what difference does the actual
touching of artworks and museum objects make?"